How hot is it?

It's so hot that yesterday we had an electrical 'interruption' (something exploded in the green box on the corner) yesterday at 5pm. That was at the end of a one-hundred-degree temperature day -- at 5pm. The house systems surged, but the surge protectors and UPS saved the computer

Tonite at 8pm I had another power surge, at 8pm. Nothing exploded, and I thought that my UPS had saved all the systems. (The temperature today reached 103.)

I got the UPS rebooted, and the router is up. But I couldn't get my desktop to boot. It lost its BIOS. I can't find my system disk, so I'll have to take it into the Puter Hospital tomorrow. They built it, they can fix it. And maybe even find me a boot disk to replace the one I 'miss-filed'.

So I'm in the downstairs dining room, the coolest room in the place (upstairs is still 93 degrees ... 89 with the air conditioner running), and working with my laptop. This may have been one of the better investments I've made lately, along with the router.

I have a towel at my side to wipe the sweat off my brow ... the doors are open, but there's no breeze. And the air conditioners are both upstairs.

Last night I let my air conditioner run all night in my bedroom. It's a portable, so the hose for condensation goes into a one-gallon bucket. When I got up this morning, the bucket was overflowing, soaking the carpet around the air conditioner. I soaked up the excess with towels, which are now in the washer, and let the natural heat of the day dry the carpet. Worked just fine. Wish I could say as much for my desktop.

In another hour it will be significantly cooler outside than in my upstairs bedroom, so I'll turn on the window fan to put some cooler (not cool, except in comparison to the 92 degrees held in the room), and later I'll turn on the air conditioner. First, though, I'll check the drainage bucket. I know there's already a half-inch of water from the hour I ran it early this evening.

The weather service says it will be 100 degrees again tomorrow. Some sources predict the heat will rise to 110 degrees.

It's not really so bad when I'm sitting in front of a computer (except for when the computer dies), but trying to compete in an IPSC match in a gravel-surfaced shooting bay with berms on 3 sides feels like I'm perched at the focal point of a parabolic mirror. Every erg of solar energy is pointing right at me, boring into my soul. It saps my energy and distracts me so I am unable to concentrate on tasks ... such as holding my sight picture on an 8" plate sitting 30 yards away. (Or a "metric" cardboard target's A-zone even when it's a lot closer.)

This kind of heat is said to be predominate for the rest of this week.

I remember being in Vietnam during the hot season of 1969. It was muggy, hot, and we were operating in the areas around Dian and Cu Chi, which were often fairly open. It was bad enough when we were operating as unattached infantry, working our way through areas which alternated between relatively open, and jungle. We sweated all the time, and there was rarely any breeze then, either. We had light field packs and were 'rapidly mobile' which means that we weren't carrying heavy packs with gear weighing 60 pounds or more. but we had to carry so much water and ammunition that it was often difficult to stand up with your gear on your back anyway.

Today, I don't have to carry any gear. In fact, I'm sitting in my dining room in short pants and nothing else. No load to carry, and my biggest worry is that I need to cake my PC to the shop tomorrow. And I'm complaining?

That's a luxury, and as I sit here dripping in sweat, it helps to remind myself how very EASY my life has become.

The sun is going down, and I still have electricity and lights. I can stay up as late as I want.

Back then, my most common fantasy was to sleep on a bare mattress on the floor, with fans blowing cool air over me from all directions. And there were no creepy crawly things sucking my blood as I slept. (You would be amazed at how prevalent leeches were when you slept on notionally dry ground. Especially in the Rubber Plantations, or rather what remained of them.)

Now, I don't have to stand a watch, I'm not in an 'ambush position', there aren't flares in the air or artillary going off in the middle of the night, I'm sleeping in a very comfortable bed.

And nobody is shooting at me.

Compared to that, I'm in Hog Heaven.

God Bless America.